This week we’re keeping our abdominals engaged by doing asymmetrical exercises and exercises with a plank element. Three rounds.
1 arm clean and press | 30 |
bench press | 20 |
renegade rows | 10 |
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woodchoppers | 30 |
flies | 20 |
kickbacks | 10 |
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squat to leg lift | 30 |
deadlifts | 20 |
star plank | 10 |
Sometimes the Amazing Stickie wants to keep it simple while still getting her heart rate up. Doing leg kicks is a good way to accomplish both of those things. No equipment is required. On days when Stickie’s hamstrings are feeling tight, this exercise also gives her some dynamic stretching.
To begin, she stands with her usual good posture. Then she quickly kicks her right leg up in front of her, touching her toe (or shin, or knee, for those of us with less flexibility than Stickie). She lowers her arm and leg and repeats on the other side. The faster she goes, the more her heart rate gets up.
Sets of thirty work well.
Let’s talk about pain, because of course we want to start the day on a good note, right? If we have started to work out for the first time in January, or if we got back to our good workout habits, we have probably noticed that it’s not all fun and comfy times.
While I try to keep workouts fun, or at least tolerable, discomfort is an inevitable part of growth. What we need to learn is to distinguish between that discomfort and actual pain.
Pain is intended to be our friend. Its job is to warn us that we’re doing something dangerous or harmful. When we feel pain during our workouts, we need to stop. Working through pain is not bravery, but stupidity. Yes, even if we are professional athletes in a crucial game situation, which most of us are not.
However, if we feel our muscles complaining a little while we’re working them, that is all right. If we feel sore and tired at the end of our workout, that is also all right. Soreness may persist or even worsen the next day. This is entirely normal and expected. We can do some gentle movement, take some Ibuprofen (if that is appropriate for us), or use heat (to soothe) or ice (to reduce swelling). If we are still sore several days later, we learn that we might want our next workout to be a little less strenuous. (This can be frustrating if the workout is one that we used to do with ease, but we work out with today’s body, not the one we had back in the day.)
In that last paragraph, I’m betting that a lot of us skipped right over that gentle movement as a treatment for soreness, so I’m giving it its own paragraph. Movement reduces the perception of pain. Now: I’m not saying that we should go hop up and down on a broken leg or anything. I AM saying that taking our sore selves for a short walk or doing some stretching will help us feel better sooner.
Then, when our soreness has passed, we can go work out again!
The best blog post ideas come from my super awesome clients. One of them asked me whether it was possible to do, say, bench press with twelve-pound dumbbells forever and have it be okay.
There are a lot of ways to answer that question.
One: yes. The workout we are willing to do is always better than no workout.
Two: maybe. It depends on why we want to do that. We, culturally, are under so much pressure to do more and faster and better that it’s a little bit amazing that we don’t all just blow up. If we are trying to unplug from the competitive machine without sacrificing our desire to be healthy, exercising beings, it is perfectly all right to have a go-to workout that hits all our major muscle groups, gets our heart rates up, and gives us a chance to balance and stretch. We do not have to do the shiny new workout of the moment.
Three: no. BORING! Bodies and brains need different stimulation in order to prosper. Doing the very same workout forever sounds like absolute torture to me, personally, and while I may not be entirely normal, I’m sure I’m not alone in this. A boring workout is easy to postpone or shirk entirely. Worse, when we’re bored, we tend not to pay attention to what we are doing and that is a good way to get injured. From a body perspective, there are several reasons to change things up from time to time. One is that we grow in response to challenge. Those twelve-pound weights are going to become ridiculously easy to press after a while, so we are not providing our muscles with sufficient challenge. Another is that, depending on our age, we need either to build up strong muscles and bones or to prevent and/or postpone the natural loss of muscle and bone that comes with aging; we do this by lifting challenging weights.
We need to consider why we are asking the question when we choose our answer.
Go play.
I am on vacation, but y’all can still work out! Three rounds.
woodchoppers | 30 |
bench press | 20 |
lateral raise | 10 |
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clean and press | 30 |
1 leg squat | 20 |
curls | 10 |
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jacks | 30 |
flies | 20 |
pretty princesses | 10 |
Today the Amazing Stickie is working on her biceps. She could do ordinary curls, or hammer curls, but she wants a little extra challenge. Enter the kettlebell hammer curl. Because of the shape of the kettlebell, she has to work extra hard to stabilize the motion as she curls it. Here’s how it works.
Stickie begins holding the kettlebell in one hand down at her side. Keeping her upper arm next to her body and her torso still, she bends her elbow to lift the kettlebell toward her shoulder. The ball end of the kettlebell should be pointing up at the top of the movement. Then Stickie lowers the kettlebell back to the starting position.
A set of five reps on each side is a good place to start.
Yesterday we talked about where we are and where we want to go. Now it’s time to get to the actual goals.
One way to structure goals is to make SMART goals. That is, goals that are specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and timely. Instead of saying “I want to lose weight,” which is definitely a goal, we might say, “I want to lose ten pounds in the next two months.”
While a lot of people love SMART goals, I have a few issues with them. For one thing, when we’re just starting out with fitness, we have no idea what is achievable or realistic in any particular time frame. How many magazine headlines have we all seen in the grocery store offering us fifty pounds of weight loss in a month? Maybe it’s twenty pounds in two weeks, or thirty by swimsuit season or whatever. We don’t generally know what is sustainable and healthy. (Note: healthy, sustainable weight loss is generally one to two pounds per week, but some of us lose faster than others.) My other big issue is that SMART goals say absolutely nothing about how. Great! I want to lose ten pounds and I know when I want it done, but how the heck am I supposed to do it?
I am a fan of process goals. Process goals take a quick look at the direction we want to go and then drill down on how. If, as in my example above, I want to lose ten pounds, I keep that aim in my mind and make some process goals like “I am going to do 30 minutes of cardio on five days this week to burn some calories” or “I am going to stop eating chocolate for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.” Process goals give us something to do rather than something to aim for.
That said, we might have to do some experimenting. I may discover that 30 minutes of cardio isn’t enough, or that replacing chocolate with vanilla ice cream doesn’t actually improve the situation. Or I may learn that after one day of cardio, I’m so exhausted that I can’t get off the couch for three days. That is all right. We are learning. We are growing. We are allowed to modify.
Which brings me to my final comment on goal setting. I believe in stupidly easy goals, especially when we are starting our fitness journey or are starting to incorporate something new into our routines. Our first goal is to build the habit of success and we do that by making it as painless as possible. Walk five minutes every day. The next week, we may walk six, or ten. Do one pushup, and make it a wall pushup. Once we have established good habits, we shift just a little bit and set ourselves minimums: I do 30 minutes of cardio at least three days a week, or I lift weights at least once a week for 15 minutes, or I eat at least one vegetable every day.
Bottom line: choose an aim, make process goals to get there, and set minimums.
